Workshop
Overview
The objective of this
workshop is to create your strategic architecture vision, while
learning:
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about the role and
importance of architectural vision
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how to create a
compelling architectural vision, and
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how to gain buy-in
among the various communities within the organization.
Benefits
With luck, unusual
talent, and heroics, companies can create products and services that
are successful in the marketplace, at least for a period of time.
However, we cannot afford to rely on any of these! The alternative is
to use architecture as the foundation for competitive advantage.
Architecture is the translation of business strategy into technical
strategy. For your business strategy to reliably deliver it's intended
competitive differentiation, the stream of products or services must
be explicitly architected to use technology and internal core
competencies to deliver these points of differentiation.
Architectural vision is
the foundation for a successful architecture. It is needed to
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ensure that the architecture
team has unifying direction. This will save significant project
churn.
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ensure that the
architecture effort is aligned with the business vision and
strategic objectives. Even though strategic management charters
the architecture effort, it does not guarantee that they will
sponsor the project over the long haul. Full support and
sponsorship has to be earned by demonstrating that the
architecture will be the vehicle for delivering key elements of
the business strategy.
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ensure that the
project management and development community are motivated and
guided by a common vision. There are a myriad decisions not
specified in the architecture that must be aligned with the
architectural vision. Further, the technical community needs to be
motivated to accept all the constraints implicit in all the
decisions that are specified in the architecture.
Workshop Format
While there is a small amount of
lecture time devoted to key concepts, we primarily "learn by
doing." Some of the time is spent in small groups, but for the most
part we use group graphical facilitation to collect, organize and
present vision inputs, and to create the vision and a communication
plan. This is really as much a consulting engagement as a training
class. You will get help in creating your architectural vision, while at
the same learning techniques to use in creating and sharing other
visions.
Pricing
The cost for the
1-day workshop is US $5000 plus the instructor's travel expenses. The
price includes some upfront consulting in preparation for the workshop.
This consulting will help you to identify who to include in the
workshop, and help us tailor the workshop to your group.
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Workshop
Content
The workshop is a
working session designed to create a good draft of your architectural
vision and a plan for validating and communicating the vision. Lecture
segments are purposely kept to a minimum, but you will learn:
vision
concepts including what a strategic architectural vision
is, why it is important, who should be involved, what makes a vision
compelling, and how to test the vision.
techniques
for gathering vision inputs, including desired state
interviews and large-group graphical facilitation.
techniques
for creating the vision, including analyzing and structuring
the vision inputs, and organizing the vision.
techniques
for communicating the vision and keeping it current, as well
as creating a communication plan.
Audience
This workshop is
primarily designed for architecture teams and their chartering
strategic manager(s). We will work with you to decide who else
should be encouraged to participate in the workshop.
It is highly valuable
as a key part of the kick-off to an architecting project, but it is
also useful to architecture teams who are struggling because they have
no shared vision.
Prerequisites
Our prerequisites have to
do with meeting initial success criteria for the architecture effort.
When we are setting up the workshop, we will informally assess whether
your organization meets a set of critical success factors given the
mission of the architecture team. These include assessing key inputs to
the architecture vision process:
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does the organization
have a clear business vision and strategic objectives?
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is there an
understanding of the organization's core competencies?
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what is the
architectural maturity of the organization, and how does this relate
to the architecture charter?
Facilitator's
Background
The workshop leader,
Dana Bredemeyer, has over 20 years experience architecting, designing and developing
software systems, including 16 years with Hewlett-Packard. He has
provided architecture consulting and training to architects, architecture teams and their
management at the project, organization and business unit levels, and has helped teams
develop software, firmware and system architectures for products, product families and
information systems. Dana is currently co-authoring a book on software architecture for
Prentice-Hall.
ABOUT BREDEMEYER
CONSULTING|
Bredemeyer Consulting specializes in training and mentoring enterprise
and software architects. We
typically work with architecture teams, providing training and mentoring to accelerate
their creation or evolution of an architecture. However, we do offer a limited number of
workshops for open enrollment.
Tel: (812) 335-1653
Email: info@bredemeyer.com
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